Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

LISZT 97
photograph which represents Liszt as leaning on the
shoulder of Silotti.
Miss Amina Goodwin came to Liszt with an intro-
duction from St. Saens and several other Parisian
musicians of note. The afternoon when she played
for the first time among the young pianists, she seated
herself at the pianoforte with all the ease of one who
was quite at home on the keyboard, and played St.
Saens' minuet and valse. She impressed me as having
quite a style of her own—a most delicious staccato in
octave-playiug ; a very marked, but not too strongly
insistent, accentuation in her phrasing. The whole
left the impression of great elegance, refinement, and
charm. Liszt, who stood behind her, smiled several
times during her performance and took her hand as
she rose from the piano, bestowing on her some words
of approval, which I cannot exactly recall. The day
but one after, when the next reunion took place, Liszt
again called upon her to play, but she had the ill luck
to use an old and very worn edition of one of his con-
cert-studies. She played most admirably, and was
again very warmly praised by Liszt ; but I had
observed an ominous smile playing round his lips
as he looked at the well-worn pages, and I had said to
myself, ' The old Meister will pay you off for this.'
What took place when Miss Amina Goodwin next
sat down to play at the afternoons proved that my
conjectures were right. She had, at Liszt's own
suggestion, if I remember right, selected an orchestral
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